[lbo-talk] Delong puts the smackdown on ol' Whiskers

[Brad DeLong]

>andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>>>>I don't know hoe much productivity growth is due to
>>>>R&D and investment in new plant and equipment, as well
>>>>as building up necessary cash reserves and acquiring
>>>>long term assets liquid and other, but isn't that the
>>>>modern equivalent of "abstinence," where dividents and
>>>>executive jets are indulgence?
>>>>
>Abstinence, my ass. It's just the way the fucking model works. 
>Capitalism requires capital; capital may be accumulated by 
>"abstinence" or by theft. Point being, if you never get any more 
>money than that required to feed yourself (the position of most 
>workers in the world), how the fuck are you going to abstain without 
>dying?
>
>Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" is the founding myth of capitalism: 
>self-made autonomous individual marooned on a desert island 
>reinvents himself with the aid of the friend-slave Friday. Since he 
>saves Friday's life from cannibals...that's OK. More moral merit. 
>After he cobbles together a subsistence existence on the island, he 
>is rescued and returns to the world to find that his slave 
>plantations somehwere or other have made him a rich man. But that's 
>OK cause he suffered so much on the island and PROVED he could have 
>done it all by himself....so he can now enjoy his riches since they 
>were morally earned.

Same for Horatio Alger. The real increments to the wealth of his 
heroes come when they marry the boss's daughter. But it's their pluck 
and industry beforehand that legitimizes their good fortune in the 
marriage market.
-- 

Yours,

Brad DeLong